Tuesday, February 16, 2010

An Interview with Joe Biden

Our estimable contributor went the extra mile during his war of words with Dick Cheney the other day and attacked New York’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as well, accusing them, as only he could, of exaggerating the projected cost of trying Khaled Sheikh Mohammed in their city. “The mayor came along,” he said, with the distinctive Biden grin in place, “and said the cost for providing security to hold this trial is x-hundreds of millions of dollars which I think is much more than would be needed.”

I contacted him this morning to ask him about that.

Bad Rachel: Can you describe the reasoning process that brought you to conclude that “x-hundreds of millions of dollars” is “much more than would be needed” to provide security for the trial of 9/11 mastermind KSM in the city he attempted to destroy, and can you explain why you believe that the mayor of New York is not in a position to make that calculation?

Joe Biden: Oh Bad Rachel. Old Joe has known Mike Bloomberg since he had one Telex machine and a rotary phone. That is one smart Jew, and I would be the last guy as a working class Catholic to question a Jew when it comes to money—oh there I go again—OK, leave it. Real Talk! But this is a classic example of pushing the price up. New York is hurting. I know that. We all know that. Everyone is hurting since Bush caused this financial 9/11. I love Bush too. But he is responsible for millions of American kids not going to college. I get it. But these trials shouldn’t cost that much. I grew up in Scranton. We had some bad, bad characters over there. I remember when we had a trial, we needed to pay for a soap box, folding chairs and a crock pot for mother's famous Irish stew. These guys knew the score. Tough as nails. Like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed but from Scranton. Scranton had its own Taliban for a while. We called them the Kelly boys and they would sock ya harder than Jack Dempsey. So we could handle this kind of thing.

This stuff is hilarious, spot-on mimicry, until I remember that the un-faux Joe is the guy that this administration--disinterested as they are--has put "in charge" of our future relations with Iraq. Then I just wanna cry, for the sacrifices that may be wasted by the real Biden's oblivious ineptitude....I wish faux-Joe was an identical twin so he could trade places with Mr. Magoo...I'll donate "x-tens of dollars" for the necessary plastic surgery.